Why Do Soldiers Rape?
Wednesday 18 January 2012
by: H. Patricia Hynes, Truthout | News Analysis
Truthout
Why do some men assume they are entitled to sex in any way they can get it - incest, date rape, marriage trafficking, buying it in prostitution, extorting it in exchange for food in refugee camps or sexually assaulting their fellow soldiers? For more than 100 years, activists worldwide have fought against the victimization of women through sexual violence.
More recently, advocates have turned a floodlight on the perpetrators through programs and public policy focused on exposing, prosecuting and challenging the male demand [5] for sex.
So, too, with military sexual violence. When sexual abuse in the military is investigated, the focus has been largely on the victims, their experience, their characteristics, their numbers and their nightmarish plight in seeking justice within a self-protective male hierarchy. It's time to ask why soldiers rape [6]. It is time to demand answers about the pervasiveness of military rape despite a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault in the military, a ban on selling pornography in military stores and much-touted Pentagon reforms of the reporting procedures for sexual assault.
Relentless Sexual Harassment: Setting the Stage for Rape
One element of the answer to this question is the relentless sexual harassment in the military environment, which begets a culture of rape. Scholars and investigators who have studied military culture and attitudes toward women [1] have found that hostility toward women pervades military training - often out of deep antipathy for the presence of women in traditionally male space, sometimes stemming from competition, always linking manliness with sexual dominance - and that it functions like a glue to solidify male bonding over women's status as sex objects. Even with a prohibition against drill instructors using racial slurs and curses [6], military trainers intentionally use crude, sexist epithets to harden and turn young male recruits into desensitized killing machines and to demean women recruits. Use of hateful marching rhymes and taunts of "pussy," "sissy," "girl," "bitch," "dyke" and "faggot" are common in training. A former National Guard member [7]captured the culture of verbal sexual humiliation in her own experience of a drill sergeant yelling at her: "Does your pussy hurt? Do you need a tampon?"
(More here.)
by: H. Patricia Hynes, Truthout | News Analysis
Truthout
Why do some men assume they are entitled to sex in any way they can get it - incest, date rape, marriage trafficking, buying it in prostitution, extorting it in exchange for food in refugee camps or sexually assaulting their fellow soldiers? For more than 100 years, activists worldwide have fought against the victimization of women through sexual violence.
More recently, advocates have turned a floodlight on the perpetrators through programs and public policy focused on exposing, prosecuting and challenging the male demand [5] for sex.
So, too, with military sexual violence. When sexual abuse in the military is investigated, the focus has been largely on the victims, their experience, their characteristics, their numbers and their nightmarish plight in seeking justice within a self-protective male hierarchy. It's time to ask why soldiers rape [6]. It is time to demand answers about the pervasiveness of military rape despite a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault in the military, a ban on selling pornography in military stores and much-touted Pentagon reforms of the reporting procedures for sexual assault.
Relentless Sexual Harassment: Setting the Stage for Rape
One element of the answer to this question is the relentless sexual harassment in the military environment, which begets a culture of rape. Scholars and investigators who have studied military culture and attitudes toward women [1] have found that hostility toward women pervades military training - often out of deep antipathy for the presence of women in traditionally male space, sometimes stemming from competition, always linking manliness with sexual dominance - and that it functions like a glue to solidify male bonding over women's status as sex objects. Even with a prohibition against drill instructors using racial slurs and curses [6], military trainers intentionally use crude, sexist epithets to harden and turn young male recruits into desensitized killing machines and to demean women recruits. Use of hateful marching rhymes and taunts of "pussy," "sissy," "girl," "bitch," "dyke" and "faggot" are common in training. A former National Guard member [7]captured the culture of verbal sexual humiliation in her own experience of a drill sergeant yelling at her: "Does your pussy hurt? Do you need a tampon?"
(More here.)
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